Conduit
by Valieara
Summary: [Son of a Witch] Elphaba embodied in an inhale, an exhale: exhalation, exultation, exaltation.


**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

**Spoilers/Setting:** _Son of a Witch._

**Notes:** More Glinda angst for swordsrock, because I am stuck in the middle of renovating a real Wicked fic. This is old, and was formerly posted as part of something else. (It has since, obviously, been taken down.) Therefore, if you think you've seen this before, you probably have. Feedback is, as ever, loved and appreciated.

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Lady Glinda stared through the darkness. She had felt as if the breath had been knocked out of her. She was frozen, immobile, an image in time, blue eyes wide and unable to move or breathe. It had hurt. 

The slogan had been graffitied onto one of the back walls of her summer house in the Emerald City in the late evening; she remembered the cool air chilling her as much as the words on the wall. What she had been doing by the back walls of her house, she had no idea, nor could she bring herself to dredge it up; it was the area where the garbage was put out, that disrespectable place right behind the kitchens, where beggars and other street people came by and activities of the questionable variety took place. It was certainly no place for a lady, and especially no place for the lady of the house in question. Lady Glinda could only remember standing there, staring.

She had not yet heard of the Witch of the West's demise.

But the writing on the wall remained, crude and aggressive, a powerful imprint of a much more powerful force that proclaimed its life as well as hers.

_ELPHABA LIVES!_

Lady Glinda had had some idea of underground resistance; though she had blocked out much of her university days, there were a few things that leaked through unintentionally. Hadn't her old friend Elphaba abandoned her to be part of an underground resistance? She had managed to block out the old pain fairly well, however. She'd had no idea what Elphaba had been to the resistance forces, none at all until her death and suddenly everyone was shouting her name in secret. Lady Glinda was not a politician, nor did she aspire to be one or admire other politicians. As a schoolgirl, she had never understood her friend's obsession with politics. As a respected figure, she still didn't understand.

As a matter of fact, there were several things that Lady Glinda didn't understand and likely never would, but the people of Oz didn't understand that either. She tried very hard not to break into hysterical peals of laughter so as not to give whoever might be outside her door a scare. For this was as much an ironic nation as any. The ignorant electing the ignorant. The ignorant leading the more ignorant. The blind leading the blind. What a picture. Elphaba would have appreciated the irony.

Her hysterical laughter had turned into hysterical sobs.

It was the first time she had cried after Elphaba's death. Elphaba _didn't_ live, no matter what those slogans said; she was dead, dead and murdered, murdered by a child as a woman in what were meant to be her glory years. Dead and _gone._

_Is the world devoid of everything but irony?_

More ironic that she mourned a woman, the Witch, that she had never known, nor wanted to know. A voice inside her head whispered that while she might mourn the Witch's passing, Elphaba was long gone and unmourned. Elphaba was not... had not been... the Witch. Whether because it was true or Glinda refused to believe it, it was fact in her mind.

Either way, Elphaba was dead, and her rose (or emerald?) colored glasses had been taken off. Everywhere she looked, it seemed there was only pain and suffering, and she couldn't escape it anymore, even at the theatre or salons. Passing through the streets she saw the homeless Elphaba had first pointed out to her so long ago in a carriage on their first trip to the City; she saw the Quadlings hauling trash, the homeless Gillikinese; she saw destitute shacks and robberies and prostitution and rape. She saw poverty and the destructive aftershocks that inevitably came with it. She saw a city and a nation, raped and betrayed by its leader. She saw a desert, as dry as the wastelands that surrounded it.

_ELPHABA LIVES!_

She didn't.

Weary and beaten herself, Lady Glinda heard only the angry voice of a sweeping and dying political force in denial. Politics. There was no such thing; there was only power and those who tried to grab and steal at it, like the homeless outside her back door by that pesky slogan, greedily grabbing and fighting each other for the leftovers of her dinner.

She had no more idea what to do about it at thirty-eight than she had at nineteen. The only difference was that she had the means, and the will with which to use them.

_"Elphie would know what to do…"_ she'd said not so long ago to a boy she knew not so well.

Then the obvious answer was _Think like Elphie_. There was nothing, Lady Glinda decided, like calling on your youth. She remembered enough of Elphie, the Elphie before The Witch, to remember her thoughts, her passions, her driving force. She remembered intuitively understanding Elphaba's thought patterns the more they were together. But understanding was one thing; who could ever think like Elphie, in that strange and brilliant way she had about her? Who had her strange and incredible vibrancy, unnerving at times? Who had her passion and compassion, her knowledge, her intuition, her brilliant biting sarcasm and wit that had passed for her sense of humor? Even that ability to make anyone infuriated with her in less than thirty seconds sprung upon Lady Glinda out of nowhere one day. She remembered more and missed her that much more every day.

Lady Glinda would close her eyes and try to imagine herself back. Impressions of contrasts were all that lingered: late afternoon sunlight and shadow pressing lightly against her the darkness of her eyelids, wind brushing over her body, her face, comforting and chilling at once; supple grass conforming to her shape, the hard ground beneath. The abdomen she was using as a pillow gently rising and falling with each inhale and exhale; long fingers absently stroking her hair; a low indistinguishable vibration humming under her ear as Elphaba lowly murmured a passage from the book to herself, repeating something in hopes of better understanding it. It was something nearly but not quite improper, but something no one thought to question or give another glance.

She heard more whispers.

"_Elphaba lives, Elphaba lives…"_

It was like a chant, almost but not quite a song. Elphaba in song, Elphaba in music. Somehow the idea wasn't foreign to her. Elphaba as a spirit, Elphaba embodied in an inhale, an exhale: exhalation, exultation, exaltation. Lady Glinda – Glinda – could feel it, feel her. She who had claimed she was soulless permeated the very atmosphere of Oz, and was embodied. More than once, Glinda was inclined to look around in crowds, sensing her like a live current: intangible but undeniably, powerfully present.

Elphie lived, maybe more in death than she had in life. How ironic.

And how ironic that she who had scorned Elphie's passion would achieve part of what Elphie had worked toward her whole life. Ironic that Elphie couldn't see it.

_ELPHABA LIVES!_

Glinda shivered and looked away from the crude slogan outside her door, blinking back the sting and moisture caused by the sudden gust of wind.

The inhale, the exhale.

She stepped in from the cold night air.


End file.
